five by five?

[Uncle Sparky]

five by five, is a term used to let other people know that you are a loser..

see also: tally-ho

Five by five...........three by four..........four by two.....or any other variation of the theme is proper radio etiquette for informing controllers or other pilots of transmission strength and quality.

see also:inexperienced pilot who needs to read his controller/pilot glossary and AIM! ?

 

[pilotman2105]

Amateur radio (aka: Ham radio) uses something similar, except it has three values. Strength - Clarity - Transmission Quality. Strength is on a 5 scale, and the other two are on a 1-9 scale.

 

[dseagrav]

Actually, the third value is tone quality, only used for morse-code work.
There are letters that modify the last digit, to indicate chirp or other keying errors. We leave out the last number when on voice. 9 is a pure sine-wave, 1 is very rough AC.

You also get "plusses", example 5 and 9 plus 30.
That means the signal strength is S9 plus 30 decibels. (There is a gauge on the front of the radio for this. Some of the real old salts can tell just by hearing, but I'm not that old.)

A lot of people are lazy and will just say "5/9" no matter how the copy is because it's too much to read the radio and give a true number.

 

[MGXsport]

Okay, thanks. I agree with the tally-ho thing. And the accompanying "no-joy".

I think using "no-joy" is better then "we're looking for traffic". It is a lot quicker and gets the point across.

 

[pilotman2105]

Actually, the third value is tone quality, only used for morse-code work.
There are letters that modify the last digit, to indicate chirp or other keying errors. We leave out the last number when on voice. 9 is a pure sine-wave, 1 is very rough AC.

I thought that you could also include the last number on voice transmissions.

Then again, it's been 5+ years since I've picked up a ham radio, so my info is most definitely a bit "stale."

 

[dseagrav]

I thought that you could also include the last number on voice transmissions.

Then again, it's been 5+ years since I've picked up a ham radio, so my info is most definitely a bit "stale."

Tone purity doesn't apply to voice, because that's determined by the recieving radio. Offing the frequency for SSB corrects tone, using the tone knob works for everything else.